Egypt is targeting up to $1 billion in investment and 200 megawatts of data center capacity under new partnerships involving Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric and Cassava Technologies, as the country seeks to expand its digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence capabilities.
The announcements were made in the presence of Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hindi and include the establishment of Africa Data Centres Egypt and a separate partnership between Vodafone Business and Cassava Technologies to develop Egypt’s first sovereign AI factory.
Under the Africa Data Centres Egypt project, the partners plan to deploy an initial 20 MW of data center capacity within the first three years, with plans to expand to 200 MW over the longer term.
The first phase is expected to attract around $200 million in foreign direct investment, while total investment could reach $1 billion upon completion of the targeted capacity.
The project is expected to create up to 200 direct jobs and around 2,000 indirect jobs, with the companies planning to rely on Egyptian talent across construction, operations and management.
The facilities will serve enterprises, cloud service providers and international companies, supporting demand for locally hosted data and cloud services.
Vodafone Business will provide expertise in enterprise and cloud services, while Elsewedy Electric will contribute infrastructure, energy and project execution capabilities. Cassava Technologies will bring its experience in operating data centers across Africa.
Separately, Vodafone Business and Cassava Technologies are developing Egypt’s first sovereign AI factory, which will provide computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications while keeping data hosted and processed within the country.
The facility will offer access to NVIDIA accelerated computing technologies, including GPU-as-a-Service, allowing organizations and government entities to access computing resources for AI model training and inference.
The partnership will also provide specialized training and enablement programs within NVIDIA’s ecosystem to support organizations developing and deploying AI solutions.
For Vodafone Egypt, the AI project forms part of a broader investment plan. The company said it plans to invest more than EGP 20 billion ($389.95 million) during the current fiscal year, building on investments exceeding EGP 125 billion in Egypt over the past 28 years.
The projects come as the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology prepares a national data center strategy aimed at assessing Egypt’s future storage and computing needs, attracting local and foreign investment, reviewing regulations and developing specialized talent.
The strategy will also address operational efficiency, sustainability and digital sovereignty, including the ability to host critical data and applications within Egypt.
Egypt is seeking to capitalize on its geographic location and network of international submarine cables to expand its role in regional digital infrastructure. Vodafone Egypt CEO Mohamed Abdallah said Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of global data center capacity.
The latest partnerships add to Egypt’s efforts to build infrastructure supporting cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other data-intensive industries.
